Reflection 52 – On The Issue Of Quality VS. Quantity

When I joined AUC in 2017, I was assigned to teach three different courses. One that I hated, one that was OK, and a third one that I LOVED! That course was Economic Development and over time it developed into what you would call a HIT course that students really enjoyed and offered positive feedback on. One of the main lessons I used to emphasize was that when you assess economic development on a country-level, you always have to take into account qualitative issues besides the typical quantitative ones. For example, many (developing) countries began to witness what we would call massification of education (in other words, large numbers of people enrolling at schools) beginning in the 1950s. However, this increase in numbers happened side by side with a clear deterioration in the QUALITY of schools. Egypt is (unfortunately) a case in a point! Another example is access to different utilities like water and electricity. If you ONLY look at the numbers, you will easily be deceived. And actually this is what politicians usually do . They offer people a one-sided picture of a pressing issue. They brag about large numbers and probably (intentionally) fail to provide an accurate image when it comes to the quality of those utilities. So what does a high accessibility rate REALLY mean if electricity is cut-off from certain places for long periods of time or if water arrives with an unpleasant smell or taste!! See how deceptive numbers can be; didn‘t I tell you . Now, ENOUGH with my boring academic stuff and let me tell you why I wrote this reflection. Ready?
Human beings are always fascinated by large numbers for some unknown reasons! We love it when we have big numbers in our bank accounts, when large number of fans attend a game, when we receive large number of likes and comments on our various social media platforms and so on! Big numbers is always associated with success we assume. In fact, psychological research shows that people are more willing to watch a video or share a post if it ALREADY has a high number of views and vice versa. And although I used to teach my students the importance of quality versus quantity, I found myself falling into this trap with my own feet! When I first began writing my reflections, I had no idea what to expect and it was mainly confined within a very small circle of friends. Now that the page grew into tens of thousands of people, I found myself many times too much concerned with numbers. I get very happy when a certain post gets a decent number of reach and comments, and also feel a bit down otherwise! I should have known better!! Yes, it is nice to feel you are having an impact on a large number of people, BUT we should not get DISCOURAGED when we receive minimal attention. It might be that Allah wills it to affect people in a different way. Maybe what we say has little impact NOW, but a huge effect after a hundred years! Or maybe that one person who read your post, will be the ONE who transforms their country or the entire world in that respect . There are tons of other possibilities, and we simply don ‘t know how things work out in real life. I will leave you with this NICE story.
Throughout the Quran, Allah mentions several prayers that Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) used to say during his life. An interesting one I LOVE much is that he asked Allah to grant him a reputation of honor among later generations. Now, let‘s go back several thousands of years when he was asking this prayer! This is someone who took his wife and their newly born boy and literally left them in a barren desert. Do you think at that time it would have even crossed his mind that several thousand years afterwards billions of people would adhere to the Abrahamic faith in one way or another! Personally,
I very much doubt. This is why I believe we need to remind ourselves (and I say this to myself before anyone else) that SINCERITY is KEY to this issue. We should always refresh the thought within our minds WHY we are doing WHAT we are doing. Having people love your work is amazing but it should NOT be our goal. And REMEMBER those large numbers mean nothing for me and you once we realize that we all will die alone and will be carried to our graves alone! Sorry to leave you on a depressing note but this is LIFE and this is how things will eventually turn out for all of us whether we like it or not.
Instead of this being bad news, let‘s all optimize our time and refresh our intentions knowing that results might be very close or just thousands of years away . So, CHEER UP!
As for my students, I hate to be teaching something and acting differently but your professor slipped into the same hole he used to warn you about .